Expertise

About

Jacobs teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, International Criminal Law, Critical Race Theory and a seminar, Criminal Law in the Virtual Context, which examines the ways technological development creates interesting intersections between traditional civil law and criminal law. Her students blog about crime and technology. You can read their work here.

Before taking on the teaching role Jacobs was an experienced trial attorney. She represented union workers in District Council 37, New York’s second largest union and then went on to represent plaintiffs in federal civil rights litigation under the Fair Housing Act 42 U.S. C 3601, et seq. After transitioning her practice to criminal defense, she represented defendants in federal cases in the Southern District of New York and in the state courts of New York and New Jersey.

This course will study the development of international criminal law, and the development of the institutions where international criminal cases will be heard, such as the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the International Criminal Court. The course will focus entirely on criminal law, meaning both international law regarding serious criminal offenses, such as genocide and crimes against humanity, as well as domestic crime which has international implications.

This course examines the interplay between race, crime and the law in the US; covers the role of history as context for understanding contemporary laws that govern the criminal justice system, and how existing laws, their applications, and justice system practices, could be restructured and re-imagined to further racial justice.